Cass Information Systems, Inc.
Freight shipments and expenditures edged up in June after three months of lackluster performance. For the first five months of 2016, U.S. exports were down 6.9 percent compared to 2015, while imports were down 5.2 percent for the same period. These obviously had put a damper on freight performance. GDP growth was 1.1 percent for the first quarter of 2016, slower than the 1.4 percent growth rate in the fourth quarter of 2015. The Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta’s GDPNow model predicts second quarter GDP of 2.3 percent. The huge jump in employment in June is mostly for service sector jobs. There was virtually no change in transportation, construction, manufacturing or warehousing employment in June. Manufacturing was beginning to stir back to life with positive growth in production and new orders, according to the Institute for Supply Management’s PMI Indexes.
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